31 August 2010

At first sight, this extraordinary legal action against most of the digital world's leading lights might seem one of a kind:

Interval Licensing LLC ("Interval"), a Paul G. Allen company, filed a complaint today in the U.S. District Court of the Western District of Washington against major internet search and e-commerce companies alleging that they have infringed on four patents held by Interval. The eleven defendants are AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo, and YouTube.

5 comments:

It's not surprising that they do this. If I remember right, the company Intellectual Ventures made similarly ridiculous claims to innovation and fame.Also, this is only somewhat related, but Apple has filed a patent application to basically retaliate against the new laws permitting jailbreaking. It's some scary stuff, as they plan to monitor users' faces, voices, and even heartbeats. I wrote about it here: http://dasublogbyprashanth.blogspot.com/2010/08/apple-knows-your-heart-rate.html . Please do check it out and let me know what you think.--a Linux Mint user since 2009 May 1

I'm not saying the two cases are the same, but didn't Intellectual Ventures also try to claim overly broad patents over (unrelated to Interval) fundamental software (among other things)?--a Linux Mint user since 2009 May 1

About Me

I have been a technology journalist and consultant for 30 years, covering
the Internet since March 1994, and the free software world since 1995.

One early feature I wrote was for Wired in 1997:
The Greatest OS that (N)ever Was.
My most recent books are Rebel Code: Linux and the Open Source Revolution, and Digital Code of Life: How Bioinformatics is Revolutionizing Science, Medicine and Business.